Mercy Pushers Dealers, users go public on medical marijuana By Leslie Peacock Doctors or Dope Dealers? It isn't legal, but in Central Arkansas, visits from the pot peddler are spelling relief for people with HIV and glaucoma. By Leslie Peacock Sam Smith and Mark, a fellow marijuana dealer, made their way through a Saline County catacomb of a house, down dark hallways, through many doors to a stifling smoke-filled living room. There, fish swam in four aquariums, a miniature Christmas tree decorated a corner and four HIV-positive men sucked marijuana on a ceramic pipe. The men were regular customers of Mark (who didnt want to give his last name, for obvious reasons). Theyd gathered in his living room for a reporters benefit, and to help Smith make his case for legalizing marijuana as medicine. Though none had developed AIDS, they were already suffering precursor ailments -- nausea, diarrhea, exhaustion -- and using marijuana to counter those effects. With a catch in his voice, Jearl Mars said marijuana made it possible for him to get out of bed in the morning, both physically and psychologically. "Its not just getting high. Thats not the total thing. It relieves a lot of the physical symptoms, the stress. ... It takes the load off mentally," Mars said. Bryan, another of Marks clients, said one joint in the morning takes care of his nausea for hours. First diagnosed in the Navy, Bryan has tried Marinol, a prescription drug that synthetically reproduces one of marijuanas active ingredients -- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), for his nausea. But he dislikes the drug, saying its slow to work and can actually increase the nausea. He prefers to smoke marijuana. It works faster, and he cant overdose on it. And he wants to buy it from someone whos sympathetic to his illness. Most dealers "are not going to help me. [Mars] going to work with me." Marks sympathy comes from the fact that hes gay, and was once diagnosed (wrongly, it turned out) as HIV-positive. Though hes a dealer by trade, for his HIV buyers, he calls himself a "caregiver," and offers better service. Hell deliver when theyre too sick to come to him, and he lets them run a tab if they have to. Marks being fairly generous when he lets his customers put off a payment. The pot he sells goes for around $40 to $45 for a quarter ounce, an amount that lasts Bryan about three days, though others said it would be a weeks supply for them. About 40 percent of Marks business is sales to HIV-positive men, some 20 to 25 clients, he said. He met Smith last December, after Smith put up a billboard near the state Capitol grounds. It carried an open letter to Bill Clinton pleading for medical marijuana: "Our friends are dying. Please help." To the side were the words "AIDS, Cancer, MS, Glaucoma." The letter was signed "Sam." In their conversation, Smith learned that Mark "had the guts of what I wanted to do in operation," Smith said. It was just the kind of system Smith wanted to track and document in his battle to make pot legal for sick people. "Our intent in not criminal," Smith said. "I wouldnt be doing this if I thought it was likely I was going to jail." Before he leaves Mark, he cadges a couple of bags of pot to take to a quadriplegic down the road. Smith, 45, lives in Mayflower with his ex-wife and his dogs. He works odd jobs and is partly through a masters degree in social work. Hes former Navy. And hes grown and sold marijuana, though thats not how he sees it. "I dont sell marijuana. People may buy it from me. But I make no effort to sell it." For medical cases, "I will make my presence known to patients. Ill initiate contact. But I dont solicit sales." This years crop was wiped out by what Smith calls law enforcements "metal grasshoppers," so the marijuana hes distributed lately comes from other sources. For the two years previous, though, Smith says virtually all the marijuana he grew went to patients of one sort or another. Some cynical folks might doubt Smith grows pot out of the goodness of his heart. But Smith says in 1991 and 92 he gave away $20,000 worth of marijuana, and he considers sales just a way to subsidize free distribution. "The reason I'm in this, primarily, is I think disallowing of access [to marijuana] is one of the most incredibly inhumane, hypocritical, illogical ... situations that exist." But he adds, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, "Im an entrepreneur. I intend to pioneer a pharmaceutical business." Where other people see conspiracies to harm, Smith sees conspiracies to help his cause. He believes U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders intends to restore rules, killed by the Bush administration, that allowed marijuana cigarettes to be prescribed as medicine. He believes President Clinton will support Elders in that effort, and that the public will back Clinton. "Every place thats been able to put [legalization] to a vote, its gotten a bigger percentage support than Clinton got," Smith said, referring to referenda in Oregon and Alaska. Alaska at one time had a law allowing residents to grow marijuana for personal use. Its this optimism thats persuaded Smith to be so open about Arkansass medical pot trade, and his belief in civil disobedience as a way to change bad law. "I dont have any fear about doing right. ... Im going to dare people to screw with me. Im putting every bit of my intellect, 20 years of dope dealing cunning ..." into his cause. And he backs it up with religious belief. "It says in Genesis, God said, behold, I have given you every herb on the face of the earth bearing seed ... to you it shall be for meat." Mercy Pushers Janice Jones, 43, is a slight, dark-haired single parent who shares a tiny, immaculate apartment in Cabot with her 9-year-old daughter, Margie. Shes working toward an associates degree in English and hopes to become a writer, as does her daughter. They live a fairly normal, church-going existence; on a recent day fresh baked apple pie, brownies and cheese were set out for Margies after-school snack. "Can I eat the brownies?" Margie asked. Yes, Jones laughed, they were safe. No marijuana in them. "I have to put signs on the brownies," Jones said. "I put Do Not Eat on them and keep them in the closet." Jones was diagnosed with acute-angle glaucoma in the summer of 92. Besides blurring her vision and causing excruciating eye and head pain, if left untreated it can rapidly bring about blindness. She held up a thimble-sized bottle of Timoptic, the medicine prescribed for her condition. But when Jones took the medication, her blood pressure took a dive, her heartbeat slowed and she began to have respiratory problems. A friend sat with her through the night, and in the morning took her to the doctor, who not only took her off the Timoptic, but said, because of her reaction he was fearful to prescribe other medications. So Jones listened to another advisor: a friend who suggested she try marijuana, and who knew how to procure it. "I told my doctor, Im going to treat it myself," Jones said. Since August of 92, she has eaten or smoked a small amount of marijuana daily, continuing to go to her doctor for checks on her eye pressure. "He would never mention marijuana," Jones said. "He would just say, Its working." What marijuana does, Jones says, is reduce her eye pressure from the sight-threatening twenties to the safer teens, though it vacillates depending on the amount and type of cannabis. At the same time, she gave up medications shed taken for 15 years for epilepsy -- a mixture of phenobarbital and Dilantin -- with no ill effects. At one point, Jones abandoned the marijuana to test its efficacy. After a week off, she ended up in the emergency room with blinding head pain and grand mal seizures. She told the emergency room doctor shed been treating both conditions with marijuana but had stopped; the ER physician said that stopping the pot had triggered the emergency. Jones daughter at first objected to her mothers use of an illegal drug. "I told her that knowing that without it, I might not be able to see you ... and thats giving me the courage to do this." It is for her daughters sake that she does not smoke in the apartment, but takes in cannabis only in tea or brownie form when her daughter is home. When she does smoke, she sits outside on her porch. She said smoking the drug works best. The street light, normally a hazy halo at night, comes into focus as she smokes. "My daughter knows what a felony is. I never have more than an eighth of an ounce in the apartment at any time," Jones said. Under Arkansas law, possession of less than an ounce is a misdemeanor. It was the burden on Margie that Jones sought to lessen when, in mid-November, she stood up at her church, Grace Chapel Foursquare Gospel, and told her lifelong friend and pastor and the congregation she was using marijuana to treat her glaucoma. She said she and Margie hoped sharing the secret would make its burden less, and she asked for the congregations support and prayers. She received their hugs, she said, if not their approval. Jones does not pay for her cannabis, but gets it through a network of Arkansas growers she has dubbed the "Saints of Sight." When she can, she barters for the drug, trading items like clothes, flower seeds, "whatever might be needed." She hopes "Saints of Sight" will one day be a legitimate organization giving help to glaucoma victims who cant tolerate other drugs. "Its important to me that it be recognized as an alternative treatment," Jones said. She eagerly awaits the day her nephew, who suffers from cerebral palsy, can use it to ease the spasticity he suffers. "I see it as his Lorenzos oil." She plans to bake him a cake. "You can argue that we have drugs that are legal that are more dangerous than marijuana, and that would be a true statement. But on the other hand, do we need another uncontrolled psychoactive drug out there? Weve got enough trouble without adding another." Dr. Don E. McMillan is the head of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the current Wilbur Mills professor on alcoholism and drug abuse prevention. Though he acknowledges that there is much anecdotal evidence of marijuanas benefits, he does not believe the plant is "the drug of choice right now for anything." Synthetic THC preparations, such as Marinol, are used to treat nausea in chemotherapy patients. But marijuana research, McMillan said, has slowed in recent years because of a lack of what he termed "exciting" results. Though McMillan said he wavers on legalizing the plant, he does not think its dangerous, especially when compared to alcohol. "Im not against its medical use. If somebody could show a convincing chemical trial that this was a better way, I would believe it ... but I dont think [the evidence] is out there." Asked about Jones use of marijuana for her glaucoma, McMillan said she needed to go back "and talk to a physician. When one gets involved in self-medication with drugs like this ... theyre vulnerable," both medically and legally. Though marijuana may help isolated cases such as Jones, McMillan is not convinced its clinical usefulness outweighs its potential threat. Sometimes, he said, "in protecting the masses, there are individuals that pay."